Wal-Mart – In China

I am told that there are four Wal-Mart Supercenters in Beijing and its suburbs. I can only speak to seeing two and being inside of one of the supercenters. To be completely blunt about the experience is simply the easiest way to proceed. The store looks and feels nothing like that of any American Wal-Mart I’ve seen or visited. The Wal-Mart south of Wudaokou is three stories with no distinct or understandable layout of the floor plan. Now that’s not to say that Wal-Mart doesn’t have a real floor plan its just that this westerner doesn’t understand or know the Wal-Mart plan. I am sure with all of their capital and human resources they must have a winning formula, I just don’t happen to understand it.

So you start on the top floor (entrance is on the third floor only) and get to see the personal hygiene, clothing, shoes, and household products. On the second/ middle/ ground floor you have consumer electronics, books, furniture and other large household items. It is also of note that the second floor/ground floor is also the floor with the cash registers and checkout process. As a point of interest in china each cashier line has two cashiers and plastic bags cost extra (10 mao (our cents) per bag). The common opinion among us expats (expatriated students) is that this is done to prevent waste and lower the demand for plastics in the country.

Now back to the store:
The first and basement floor is the food section of the supercenter with all sorts of meats, vegetables, and dried goods. So now you the reader are wondering what did he mean no layout or floor plan. You just spent two paragraphs describing it. Yes I did and no there is no great floor plan than that. As to the arrangement and distribution of items on the floor is what my original point was about. There is no (seemingly) order to why the shoes go next to baby goods and cosmetics next to clothing. It just seems like that is the accepted way.

For those of you who own Wal-Mart stock let me put your minds to rest. I have visited this store multiple times and at all hours of the day always to find it packed with paying customers. To those of you who think a line on black Friday is bad I would ask you to come to a Chinese Wal-Mart on Thursday or Friday nights in China. Now I am sure the casual reader has determined a flaw in the Wal-Mart scheme in China.

Perhaps that is how do people move their carts through all the floors? Elevators, Stairs, Teleportation, their backs all seem like plausible answers to this question. The true answer is even simpler and more elegant. They have escalators that take the customer from floor to floor and don’t worry about the cart sliding down without you. The engineer who came up with this solution gave that issue an even more elegant solution, magnets. Four high strength magnets lock your cart into the escalator.

I am sure that this little post might raise some questions so feel free to email me and I’ll try to post some pictures from my next visit to help explain this. As to my next post its going to cover this past weekend (Tianjin and the Great Wall).